


To Die in the Dust

by tiamat100



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Death, Torture, caste system based cruelty, may come across as romanticism but i promiuse that wasn't the intention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 22:01:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15738177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamat100/pseuds/tiamat100
Summary: Natia Brosca was born in the dust, and that's where she will die. Forgotten more easily than a dusty footprint, long swept away.





	To Die in the Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Includes references to torture, public execution, imprisonment, discrimination, and the dwarven caste system as portrayed in dragon age.

To Die in the Dust

It will mean nothing, Natia thinks, as she sits in the cell waiting for what will happen. She will just be another Duster, gone without anyone noticing. Kalah will hardly notice. She hardly notices Natia is there to begin with.  


Leske will die with her, and the only person left to mourn is Rica. She’s alienated everyone else, refusing to get close, punishing who she is told to. She tried so hard to be too important to the carta for Beraht to toss away.  


She failed. She won a Proving- a Proving full of Ostagar’s greatest warriors, in front of a Grey Warden of all people- and they’ve still tossed her here, leaving her to stew before they whip her to pieces and break her apart and scatter her bones for the deep stalkers to choke on.  


She hopes Rica wasn’t lying or being idealistic when she mentioned her possible patron. She hasn’t prayed to the Ancestors in years, she’s heard too many times that she pollutes the stone and why would they even listen, but for Rica’s sake she tries now.  


Ancestors, she thinks. I know that my existence offends you. I know that my actions have been wrong and have offended you. But I beg of you, please extend your mercy to my sister. She did not deserve to be Casteless. Please, help her find a place in the light.

She doesn’t believe it will do any good, though. Why would the Ancestors care about a Duster? She’s seen babies torn from their mother’s arms and branded, with no one caring if the brand burns too much and the child dies, either there and then or days later from the infection.  


She’s seen people starve to death to feed a child. She’s seen people steal scraps from children. She’s been the child they’ve stolen from, and she’s been the thief, too desperate to care.  


She’s seen people whipped to death for walking in the commons and their appearance offending a noble. She’s seen noble hunters be raised up only to have all their family killed rather than raised with them.  


She knows that, if the Ancestors do watch, if they do help, they don’t help the Dusters. Dusters don’t join the Ancestors, after all. They just die.  
She hopes Rica won’t have to see her die.

She wonders idly in what order her punishments will come. Will they whip her first, or take her hands? Undoubtedly all the non-lethal punishment will come before they kill her, to ensure she suffers. Will they make it public, as an example, or will they keep it quiet to try and hide that a Duster got so far at all? 

  


Natia Brosca doesn’t want to die, but the world has always been craving her suffering. She wonders, now, whether death will bring an end to that suffering.  


She doesn’t expect it to bring anything better.  


When they open the cell and drag her out, she spits at them, earning a boot to the teeth for her trouble. Ah, well. A dead woman doesn’t need teeth, does she?  


They go for a public punishment, and they must have caught wind of Beraht’s initial plan from someone- perhaps Leske?- because they announce that she drugged all of her opponents and cheated their victory from them.  


She protests that. By the stone, if she must die, she will make sure they know what she is dying for!  


“I drugged no one!” She bellows. “I won with my own ski-“  


A heavy blow hits her stomach, driving the air from her. She chokes. They tie her to the post.  


The whipping is terrible. She has been sentenced to so many blows that they cannot come all at once- they want her to experience all the pain, not to die partway through and “escape”.  


So she is dragged, bleeding and weeping in agony, back to her cell. She is forced to swallow a herb which she is told will slow the bleeding enough to keep her alive, but not dull the pain. They clean out the wounds, taking no care to be gentle, and the alcohol they use makes her cry out again, almost as bad as the initial blows.  


Her suffering is long, because the first blows must heal before they can give her the next.

The second time, she fights so hard that she nearly escapes. That is when they decide that the next punishment will be to take one of her hands, so she is not as difficult to force into submission.  


“For befouling a Smith’s work.” They say.

“I honoured it with my victory!” She roars.  
They use a blunter axe than necessary, drawing out the pain for as long as they can. Then they brand her to stop the bleeding, cauterising the stump. 

Even if she could escape, there would be no way for her to make a living in Dust Town now. 

It is months before they kill her. For her escape attempts, they have added on more punishments, until she is sure they want the punishment to end nearly as much as she does.  


After all the build-up, they have to give her a public execution, but she hears the guards grumbling. Stretching this out so long has only made people remember the embarrassment. There have been whispers about how a duster had defeated experienced, honoured soldiers.  


They laugh at the poor woman, now, hardly recognisable. She doesn’t doubt she could be mistaken for a ghoul or some strange beast, if they didn’t know the truth. 

On the day of her execution, her prayers are answered. She is taken to the commons. There are crowds, thirsty for the blood of a brand.  
Natia looks up, at the last moment, and sees the impossible.  


Next to King Bhelen, clutching a babe to her chest and wearing the clothes of a noble, perhaps even a queen-  
Rica.  


The Ancestors did listen, she thinks, and she smiles at her sister in relief as her last breath is stolen from her. 

 

By the time Rica has her second child, the story is forgotten by the nobles, for the most part. The Dusters, however, know that one of them beat all the Noble warriors in the Proving. They know that she kept fighting to the end and died with a smile on her face. They know that her sister had the child of a Prince and was raised to be his consort.  


For the first time in centuries, the Casteless have started to have heroes. They’ve started to hope. And Rica knows what she is doing when she enters her child’s name in the Memories, in a way that defies convention and perhaps even law. The second-born child of the consort does not rate the Shaper himself as a witness, so it is one of his most highly ranked assistants who does this duty.  


“Natia Brosca Aeducan.” She tells them. “Named for her aunt.”  


That very sentence is entered into the memories, despite the Shaper’s disapproval when he discovered it, and Bhelen’s clear displeasure. Once it was done, it could not be undone. 

Her sister may have lived and died a Duster, forgotten as easily as the nobles might lose a copper, but she was in the Memories of the Nobles and the memories of the dusters, and she would not be forgotten.


End file.
